Giving And Taking
by Windresss
Summary: Authority Slash. MidnighterApollo drabble about acceptance, and deserving it.


Giving and Taking

By: Windresss

Series: The Authority (Midnighter/Apollo)

Spoilers: none

A/N: Just a drabble my mind thought up when I was trying to go to sleep. yeah, no luck there.

Disclaimer: Wildstorm owns these two gorgeous men. I wish they were mine, but alas, my dorm room is big enough for two super beings with muscles the size of my head and a really affinity for getting in each others pants. Pleasant as that would be to watch.

Additionally, if Wildstorm wasn't such a cop-out, we might have actually seen scenes like this in the comic. And that one hokey page of Jenny running in on them in bed together does not count.

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He wakes slowly, but with surety. Reaches instinctively for the bulk on his right, and finds only cooling sheets.

His lover is gone. again.

It's not uncommon. Apollo knows Midnight can brood better than any man he's ever met, and sometimes he disappears for hours in the maze of halls belonging to the Carrier. Apollo is never certain how he doesn't get lost; chalks it up to that computer enhanced mind, and waits for him to return. Because there is no chance in hell he'll find an unwilling Midnighter.

Just to make sure, his big hand sweeps the sheets, finding only vacant rumples in the 300 count fabric. Sheet he insisted on buying despite how his lover grouched that it made him feel "too pampered," to which Apollo reminded him that they no longer lived on the streets.

He tries to judge the lingering heat, determine how long the surly bastard has been gone. Long enough. He sighs deeply, the gesture loud with resignation in the silence of their room; Surprised, when a dryly amused chuckle answers him back.

"...Mid?"

"I'm here." Voice like gravel, with no real specific source, and Apollo turns his head on the pillow to scan the room. His night vision isn't all that great, particularly by comparison to his counterpart. And Midnighter is made to be invisible in the darkness, even naked, which Apollo thinks he must be when he spies the other man's mask sitting on the bedside table.

Last thing he takes off, first thing he puts on. sometimes, his lover's shame pains Apollo.

"what are you doing?"

"watching you."

Apollo thinks he knows the answer, still gazing at the mask as if it were speaking. "why?"

Silence.

Apollo must be very careful. He rolls onto his back and tips his head towards the large darkness beyond the bed, eyes half closed. Slow inward breath that makes every muscle in his abdomen tremble, expand, and stretch his smooth skin. He exhales another sigh,

"I look better when you're with me."

There's a snort, and Apollo closes his eyes. lies still and quiet and warm, and eventually, the bed to his right dips.

He smiles.

-----------------

He knew when he was coming awake. His tactical implants picked up the alteration in heartbeat, breath, muscle response.

Knowing all that, it was still beautiful.

Warm surge inside him when he sees the pale figure extend his hand in the unoccupied dent of the mattress. Captivation at how that big body ripples and sprawls like warm feline in a self made sun. The heat in remembering how that body feels, tastes, smells.

And always the knowledge in the back of his mind that this was the best time to kill a body, when it was slow and addled with sleep.

The long sigh is amusing because he knows what his lover is thinking. He rasps a chuckle, watches the way Apollo becomes alert. Chances of killing him in the first thirty seconds just dropped from 78.396 to 47.194.

"Mid?"

Automatic. "I'm here." It was something he used to say, when they spent nights in dirty entryways and abandoned buildings. Reassurance for them both that Midnighter was here and not off doing things neither of them wanted him to do.

"What are you doing?"

A thousand responses, all the variation of the truth, flicker in his head. He chooses the least complicated. "watching you."

Like watching stars, or an eclipse, or something so beautiful it was impossible to think how it could lie right here before you and be yours. Impossible even for a computer-enhanced mind.

"why?"

Midnighter's implants lull in their ceaseless activity when Apollo shifts to his back. Planes and valleys of endless, perfect flesh, crested by dusky pink nipples and jutting collarbones. The sheet is at Apollo's waist, and Midnighter's lips remember the feel of the soft hair just below the navel.

Apollo breathes, his big body seeming to fill the room even more, then exhale warm into the cold recesses Midnighter has retreated to. He feels that heat, stomach twitches at the desire to pursue its source.

"I look better when you're with me."

His implants are cynical. They try to argue with that. But Midnighter only hesitates long enough to drink in Apollo's receptive shape once more before silently padding to his side of the bed.

He never gets tired of being wanted.

fin.


End file.
